One Chargers coach ripped off his blue jacket and twirled it overhead. Two fans, leaning over a rail, practically pulled safety Eric Weddle into the stands by his shoulder pads. Coach Mike McCoy ran to catch team President Dean Spanos walking up the tunnel.

They hugged with a word: “Yes!”

The stench from the past 3 hours and 15 minutes was gone.

The Chargers are playoff-bound for the first time since 2009, booked to play the Bengals in Cincinnati on Sunday. To get there, they first got the help they needed; two games before theirs couldn't have been sweeter. They then prevailed after stinking up the joint in a 27-24 overtime win against Kansas City.

To force overtime, the Chargers relied on a missed 41-yard field goal from Chiefs kicker Ryan Succop, sailing wide right. San Diego went into halftime down 21-14. It trailed by two scores in the fourth quarter. These Chiefs, by the way, played with four Pro Bowlers and their starting quarterback all inactive, and 20 of 22 starters pulled from their lineup.

Hence the smell.

“We basically went out there and (expletive) down our pants the first half — and really the whole game,” linebacker Donald Butler said. “Ugliest game ever, but we're in. That's all that matters.”

“We made it,” left tackle King Dunlap said. “We're here. The regular season is over. All playoffs. No more what-ifs. No more needing people to do this and that. It's all on us, like it needs to be. Like it should have been all along.”

They are 0-0.

In the past two weeks, six results had to go San Diego's way to earn a Wildcard Weekend berth — as the sixth seed, they play the third-seeded Bengals at 10:05 a.m. PT. The odds were long. A 3.0 percent chance, Football Outsiders called it. A 1.6 percent likelihood, MakeNFLplayoffs.com said.

Miami couldn't win one more for the Chargers to make the playoffs. It was shut out 19-0 in Buffalo and lost 20-7 at home Sunday to the Jets. They were two of the Dolphins' three worst losses of the season.

Baltimore couldn't win one more for the Chargers to make the playoffs. It was blown out 41-7 by the Patriots and lost 34-17 Sunday in Cincinnati. They were two of the Ravens' worst three losses of the year.

San Diego went from 5-7 to 9-7, so it did its part in the six-game parlay. After beating the Raiders last week, it only had to survive the short-handed Chiefs, who had nothing at stake, locked into the AFC's fifth seed.

During on-field warmups, players followed the Dolphins loss from the scoreboard video.

Flat screen televisions showed both games in the pre-game locker room.

“Maybe we felt the pressure a little more than we applied the pressure, you could say,” McCoy said. “We didn't make some plays we've been making all year long. We missed tackles, let the ball go over heads, which we've been doing a great job the last month or so of not letting (happen). … But it's the character of the team, and talked about it from day one. They believed, and they just kept on plugging away.”

McCoy, in the playoffs in his first year as coach, didn't scream at players during halftime.

That wouldn't have been him. The message to his team was to believe.

It became easier after Succop missed, the Chiefs called heads on the overtime coin toss, and it showed tails. And when safety Eric Weddle converted a fake punt from the team's own 28, it practically seemed destined.

Quarterback Philip Rivers and running back Ryan Mathews paced the team downfield from there, setting up a 36-yard Nick Novak field goal.